


Ignus Fatuus

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Solstice stories [7]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Children of Characters, Cute Kids, F/M, Family, Future Fic, Married Couple, Married Life, Romance, Summer Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25083553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: She has no trouble finding them. She follows the trail of pictures he’s been sending her as she crawled along in traffic she’d been determined not to get stuck in—not today, but the precinct, as usual, had different ideas. She hasn’t stopped at the house. She hasn’t stopped to change or to grab a much-needed cup of coffee, and she’s so glad she has no trouble finding them.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Solstice stories [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/492307
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Ignus Fatuus

**Author's Note:**

> For someone who hates the sun, I always feel drawn to stories about the longest day.

She has no trouble finding them. She follows the trail of pictures he’s been sending her as she crawled along in traffic she’d been determined not to get stuck in—not today, but the precinct, as usual, had different ideas. She hasn’t stopped at the house. She hasn’t stopped to change or to grab a much-needed cup of coffee, and she’s so glad she has no trouble finding them. 

He’s lying, face up, on the first-base side of the pitcher’s mound in the middle of a pee wee baseball diamond. His legs are covered in sandy orange dust all the way to the hem of his cargo shorts. 

Not far off—just a yard or two toward home plate from the pitcher’s mound—Lily has a lap full of dandelions. Her hands work slowly at two stems. Her total concentration on the task is obvious In the way she chews at corner of her lower lip. 

The peaceful scene in the middle of the diamond does not extend to the base paths. Those are occupied by an enormous, shrieking dust cloud that seems like it _must_ contain some kind of horde, but her ear readily picks out just the two voices—Jake mostly, and Reese every once in a while. 

She has no trouble finding them. She’s relieved about that, but she takes a moment with her fingers curled in the chain link fronting one dugout to drink in the picture—the mix of quiet and chaos—the four of them make. 

It’s Lily who spies her first, in the last breath before the beauty of it can overwhelm her to the point of tears.

“Mom,” she shouts. Her long-legged girl, who is too grown up most days to call her _Mama_ any more, pushes to her feet, scattering knotted green stems and vibrant yellow flowers. Her sparkly pink sneakers pound over grass, over the third base line, over the pale orange, hard-packed dust in front of the dugout. She collides with Kate, enveloping the two of them in an orange cloud. “It’s still day time!” 

“It is!” She tickles the underside of her daughter’s chin until they’re both squinting up, funny faced, at the sun still clinging to the western sky. “I didn’t miss it.” 

“I ran a hundred miles, Mama!” Reese joins the huddle, tugging at her left hand. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead and his cheeks are cherry red with exertion. 

“A hundred!” Kate lets her eyes go wide. “All around the bases?” 

“The base _paths!”_ Jake jumps with both feet on one side of the the chalk, then the other to emphasize his point. “I ran a _hundred hundred_ miles, Mama.”

“That’s a thousand.” Lily looks down her nose at Jake, but he’s too busy walking the baseline like a tight rope to notice his big sister trying to boss him. 

“How many is a thousand thousand, Lil?” Castle’s voice drifts toward them. He’s still lying, face up, on the first-base side of the pitcher’s mound, but he’s striking a dramatic pose now. He has a dusty arm flung across his forehead. “A thousand thousand is how many miles I have run on this, the longest of days.” 

“A thousand thousand. How many do you think that is, Reese?” He lifts his arms pleadingly, and she hikes the dusty, sticky boy up on to her hip. She rests a hand on Lily’s shoulder and nudges her mound-ward—Castle-ward. Jake sees that they’re on the move and does an about face. He rushes, full tilt, to home plate and does a three-sixty spin before he makes a beeline for his father. “Castle!” she calls out a sharp warning. “Incoming!” 

“Got it.” He sits bolt upright, all his feigned exhaustion shed, and manages some kind of twisting sideways maneuver that has him snatching Jake around the waist, rather than absorbing the full impact of their most rambunctious child’s body. 

“Not a thousand thousand!” Jake hollers. He laughs as Castle sweeps an arm beneath his knees and turns him upside down with his head in the grass. “Daddy didn’t run a thousand thousand.” 

“He couldn’t run a thousand thousand miles.” Lily stoops to gather up her scattered dandelion crowns in progress. She plumps down closer to her father and fills her lap again. “That’s hyperblee.”

“Hyperbole?” He makes a great show of being offended, a great show of hefting Jake upright and banding his arms around the squirming boy to keep him close for however brief a moment, as Kate eases her way to sit at his side with Reese still cuddled against her. “I wouldn’t have thought I could run a thousand thousand miles either. But then your mother tricked me.” 

“Mama does tricks?” Jake tries to twist around to see if Castle has his tale-telling face on. Lily looks up from the work of twining stems together and even their sleepy-on-a-schedule Reese lifts his head from Kate’s shoulder. 

“It’s news to me, Jake.” She shoots Castle a dirty look that he meets with something hot, lascivious, and utterly ridiculous all at once. 

“What kind of trick?” Lily wants to know, and Reese tugs at Kate’s shirt and whispers in her ear half a dozen shy, confidential questions about rabbits and hats and ladies in big glitter-paint boxes. 

“I _still_ haven’t figured out what kind of trick it was, but she has a Lily and a Reese and a Jake to show for it.” He risks loosening his hold on Jake to bump Lily with his shoulder, to run light fingers down Reese’s back. 

Jake knows an opportunity when he sees it. He breaks free and heads for first base. “That’s _three_ tricks.” 

The words trail behind him like a kite string that tugs Lily to her feet again. She chases after him. “It’s _two_ tricks. I’m one trick and you and Reese are one trick.” 

“One trick!” Reese says against the curve of Kate’s neck. He clings tight to her for a moment longer, then he’s off and running the wrong way from first base to home. It puts him on a collision course with his brother, his big sister, who—today, anyway—is not too big to play silly games with her babies, games with swirling, constantly fluctuating rules. 

“So I’m a two-trick pony?” She scoots sideways toward him. The grass is wet in patches and there’s probably no hope for this pair of work pants, to say nothing of the light-colored summery blouse that’s picked up countless pale orange handprints. 

“You are a _many_ trick pony, Captain.” He flops on to his back and his head in her lap. He offers an ear up for the twist he knows is coming. “But tricking me into having not one, not two, but _three_ athletic children was your greatest feat.” 

On cue, Lily calls out some convoluted rule about sliding into each base. Kate makes a move, but he has her by the wrist. “It’s skidding,” he assures her as he tangles his fingers tight with her own. “Purely on their feet. No skin left behind.” 

Kate twists to see, and sure enough, she sees the sun catching the pink sparkles of Lily’s shoes somewhere in the cloud of dust, then the rapid-fire blue-red flash of Reese’s Spider-Man sneakers, the Hulk green of Jake’s. 

“Now _that’s_ a neat trick.” She skims her fingers through the hair that’s grown long enough to brush the curve of his ear. “How’d you convince Danger Boy?” She asks as Jake, on cue, executes another of his signature three-sixty spins on top of second base to celebrate his perfect skid. 

“Invoked your dad and exercised some artistic license,” he murmurs as he turns his head further into the soothing motion of her fingers. “Lily can cite Gramps, chapter and verse, on elbows and curveballs. I just extended the principle to ankles and big kid slides.” 

“And for your next trick.” She laughs and plants a kiss on his forehead.

“Oh no.” He peers up at her, crossing his eyes to hear the music of her laughter again. “For _your_ next trick, tell me again what the heck a double switch is. Jake won’t buy my Cold War spy analogies forever.” 

“A double switch,” she says absently. Her eyes are on the three heads bent together, talking over one another, with Reese’s voice uncharacteristically on top as he lobbies for some new rule of his own. Castle tugs at the front of her shirt, as child-like as ever in his own demands for attention when he knows their happy little monsters are entertaining one another. “A double switch,” she repeats briskly. She holds her wrist out, then brings it close to her face as though he’s making an exaggerated study of her watch face. “I don’t think we have that kind of time.” 

“Time?” He rises suddenly on his elbows to kiss her sweetly on the lips. He catches her chin in his fingertips. He guides her gaze toward right field where the kids have their hands planted in the grass and kick their legs upward into clumsy attempts at handstands as some new part of the game. “Solar-powered children.” He coaxes her head back and plants a kiss beneath her chin. Her breath catches as the sun, still clinging to the western sky, warms her face. “Longest day of the year,” he murmurs as his lips travel down her neck. “We’ve got all the time in the world.” 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Started this on the (northern hemisphere) summer solstice. Finished and posted it to Tumblr the day after. Just getting around to posting it here. This is as much about me missing baseball as anything else, honestly.


End file.
